It is another 4th of July week and this is my favorite holiday because I always love fireworks, and the fact that a lot of people leave this city and mostly cool people remain – and everyone is more relaxed and friendly then usual.  I will head over to the Big Apple Meat Market this afternoon and buy some Italian sausage for my Italian friend’s BBQ tomorrow down in the West Village.  Afterwards we will walk across the street (and the West Side Highway) to watch the fireworks.

So yesterday I was going for a stroll across W 57th Street and I saw this horror of horrors:

On the right is South W 57th and on the left is North W 57th and further to the left (not visible in the picture) is Central Park.  So the two buildings on the right were built in the last few years to capitalize on the amazing views of Central Park and some rich peeps spent fortunes buying apartments there.  You can see that those two buildings are already squeezed together very awkwardly – with each building blocking the other’s Easterly or Westerly views (depending on which building you live in).

In my opinion this should never have been allowed.  It not only looks ridiculous, but the two buildings are also stylistically mismatched as well.  However, all of this was offset by the fact they each had their beloved Central Park views to the North, and each building was still beautiful in its’ own right.  So there…

Then some developer, who appears to have hired an architect who attended the “Shanghai School of Architectural Excellence,” takes this massive dump across the street, blocking the Northern views of the two buildings across the street and depreciating the value of the apartments therein.   Just take a look at how ugly the “skin” of this new building is!  Here is another photo of this ~80-story mountain of human faeces (on the right):

Seriously, when I traveled around China I would see mountains of human waste everywhere and many Chinese would pride themselves on “topping off” these mountains.  Buddha only knows how they could bear the smell when they were perched atop a mound – pinching off yet another Filone-sized loaf.

It appears this whole project is Extell’s attempt to emulate the spirit of the Chinese nouveau-riche, and given that a large percentage of their tenants will in fact be Chinese, it made perfect sense to pay Christian de Portzamparc a fortune to swallow his dignity and design something that wealthy Chinese would feel comfortable in.  So when they are furiously pounding on aging prostitutes starlets like Zhang Ziyi @ $1 million dollars a night* in their One57 penthouse, they can draw that “extra boost” from the knowledge that they are one of the “king turds” crowning the Manhattan skyline.

*Apparently Zhang Ziyi is furious with this rumor that has been circulating about the world recently.  However, it is pretty much known by anyone with a brain that all Hong Kong film starlets are prostitutes who get passed around by the real estate tycoons over there in order to secure their fame.  Naturally, this doesn’t mean that Zhang Ziyi was being paid $1 million dollars a night as the rumor states.  I’m sure she spent the weekend for that amount of scratch.